Hill sheep swappers targeted
“The stocking rate required to qualify for a disadvantaged area payment was incredibly low, at around one sheep per hectare. We have doubled that now and asked farmers to have two sheep per hectare, which is less than one sheep per acre. This is still a very low stocking rate. We also said that instead of having to keep their stock for three months of the year, farmers would have to keep their stock for six months of the year. In other words, farmers would have to be farming,” said Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney.
“What we are saying is that we have a limited amount of money to spend, so let us give it to the people who are actively farming and who need that income the most,” he said, adding that he worked with farming organisations, farmers and stakeholders to find a way of saving money.
He said vulnerable categories would be exempt from the changes — including those required to have a low stocking rate because they are in a commonage framework. They will get disadvantaged area payments, uninterrupted, regardless of stocking rate.
Mr Coveney said an appeals mechanism would make quick decisions on people who have genuine reasons for a low stocking rate in 2011 — for example, a death in the family or a disease in the herd, or a young farmer taking over who had stock for four months rather than the newly required six months. “However, we cannot have a situation in which people see a change in the rules and buy in an extra sheep to try to qualify all of a sudden.”
He repeated his view that many mountainous areas are being under-grazed, which is doing as much damage as over-grazing.
On the 80-kilometre rule, the minister clarified that if the primary farm is in a disadvantaged area, leasing land in a non-disadvantaged area would not impact on payment. But if the primary farm is in a non-disadvantaged area, and one leases land in a disadvantaged area to obtain payments, one will receive a percentage payment based on the percentage of the overall land holding which is disadvantaged.
